8 Ways Mindfulness Improves Performance in Music, Sports and Performing Arts
If you’re a musician, actor, athlete or touring professional, you want to put the best into every performance or game. But this can be a lot of hard work, eventually taking a toll on your physical, mental, and emotional health. As you stretch beyond the comfort zone to take your performance, art, or game to the next level, it’s normal to occasionally feel exhausted or uninspired.
So how do you keep the passion for your art or game burning without allowing its occasional challenges to burn you out?
There’s a reason why you feel that rush in your veins when you get “in the zone” as you perform, play your favorite sport, or work behind the scenes. Your attention is no longer focused on what went wrong yesterday or what might happen tomorrow. You’re in the flow and the next move, word, or action seems to come naturally. Your brain releases feel-good neurochemicals and endorphins.
When you’re fully present and immersed in the act, you’re practicing mindfulness without even knowing it. Intentionally practicing mindfulness through practices like meditation, mindful breathing, or mindful movement can help you become present more consistently. Mindfulness also brings with it a host of other benefits to help you overcome the common challenges that any high-performer faces.
So here are 8 ways that mindfulness can help you boost performance on the stage, back stage, on the field, on the court, AND throughout your daily life.
Feel more centered and grounded
In order for your body or mind to do its best work, you need to be fully present. Mindfulness practices allow you to be fully grounded in your body. When you practice certain meditations like the body scan, you become more familiar with the most subtle sensations within and around your own body.
Noticing these sensations magnifies your ability to feel the movement in every muscle, joint, and fiber. You become more aware of your posture and any tension as it arises. This noticing allows you to spot tension or resistance so you can work through it more quickly in a way that doesn’t intervene (or even helps) your performance or game.
Align mind and body through mindful movement
Mindfulness can be integrated into any sport, exercise regimen – or anything that requires you to use your body in an intentional manner. Mindful movement is simply the practice of bringing your full attention to whatever is happening in your body as you are moving your body in different ways. In yoga, this is often practiced by focusing on your breath as you do each move.
But mindful movement goes much further beyond yoga. It can be applied to bringing awareness to even the most intense or most subtle movements in any sport or on any stage. When you’re running, for example, you could bring your attention to your feet touching the ground, to the sensations of your beating heart, or to the wind on your face.
Bounce back from mistakes or challenges faster
Because of the brain’s negativity bias, it can be easy to unintentionally dwell on our mistakes for longer than necessary. There will inevitably be times in your line of work or performance when you may say the wrong line, sing an off-key note, forget to send an important email, or literally drop the ball.
Mindfulness helps you build resilience so you can get back into the game or act faster when something unexpected or distressing happens. Rather than beating yourself up when you make a mistake, you become more aware of the thoughts, feelings or behaviors that may have led to the unintended outcome. You build a greater sense of trust in yourself and in your body so that instead of dwelling on your mistakes, you learn from them and move on.
Mindful communication skills give you the tools needed to properly communicate the mistake with the necessary people in a way that brings about solutions and growth.
Overcome the inner critic with self-compassion
Our biggest critic is often found nowhere else but in our head. If you constantly find yourself dealing with a nagging or negative voice in your mind that says that you’re not good enough, fast enough, or talented enough, you’re not alone.
While it may seem that perfectionism can be a good way to motivate yourself, research shows otherwise. People perform more effectively when motivated in a positive way that includes reward, self-compassion and encouragement. Mindfulness practice can help you build greater levels of self-compassion so that you become your own cheerleader than your own worst critic.
“While the motivational power of self-criticism comes from fear of self-punishment, the motivational power of self-compassion comes from the desire to be healthy. Self-compassion recognizes that failure is not only inevitable, but it’s also our best teacher, something to be explored rather than avoided at all costs.” – Dr. Kristin Neff
Improve focus by taming the wandering mind
When you’re in the middle of your performance or game, focus is of utter importance. Perhaps you feel great about your skills or talents but you’ve got challenging things going on in your personal life. Health, relationship, or financial stressors might make it extra difficult to fully put your head into the game or on the stage.
Mindfulness has been shown to help tame the wandering mind and sharpen focus. As you practice mindfulness meditation, you can learn to bring attention to one point of awareness without judging yourself when it wanders off. The very act of noticing that your mind has strayed is enough to bring you back into the present moment. And when you apply this to your performance, it can mean the difference between average and excellent.
Overcome stage fright or performance anxiety
As social creatures, we all want to feel accepted, understood, loved and appreciated. Though we may not always admit it, most of us care about what other people think of us. That’s why no matter how many times you’ve been on that stage, field, or rink, you may still get butterflies in your stomach each time you step out there.
Mindfulness can help you work with any performance-related fears or anxieties. Here’s how: In meditation, you get to witness your thoughts without judgment. You can thus notice any potential need for external approval or praise come up in your mind and not feel bad about feeling it. Instead you decide how you want to respond in this situation, such as choosing to give yourself the recognition or approval you seek from others.
Recover and learn faster through more rest
Performing at the top of your game means you have to put in some effort. But if your mind is always telling you that you should be doing more or pushing harder and making you feel guilty about taking time to rest, this can become counterproductive.
Rest is essential for keeping your body and mind healthy so you can perform at increasingly stronger levels sustainably without burnout. Mindfulness can help you notice your mind’s tendency to strive or push too hard. Noticing this allows you to find the space from which you can see this mental pattern and then choose to perhaps give your body or mind a break when it needs it – without the mental commentary that makes you feel bad that you’re not pushing harder.
“When things get tough and our bodies start to react, we need mindfulness to reset our internal north star. We need to be quiet, listen, and practice conscious breathing to bring ourselves back to the present moment and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, putting the brake on and slowing things down in our bodies.” - George Mumford
Increase creativity and inspiration
When it comes to certain types of work such as music or the creative arts, there may be times you find yourself in a dry spell when it comes to inspiration. Yet ironically, the more you let go of pushing and striving, the more creative you can become. By practicing mindfulness, you learn to let go of ruminative thoughts. This frees up physical and mental energy that can then be channeled towards your art or performance.
As you cultivate a different relationship with your own thoughts, you don’t let your analytical mind criticize your creative ideas. By intentionally cultivating the mindfulness attitudes of non-striving and trust, you create more room for your natural creativity and intelligence to flow through. The more you learn to trust yourself, the easier it becomes to express yourself through your favorite art or sport in a unique way that nobody’s ever done before.
An easy way to integrate mindfulness to your performance, sport, and personal life
If you’re interested in learning how to practice mindfulness in a way that helps you optimize performance in your life, a mindfulness course can be a great place to start. As someone who’s worked in the music industry for decades, I’m passionate about integrating the science-backed wisdom of mindfulness to help high-performers meet their unique needs.
Sign up for my upcoming Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course here to start your mindfulness journey. If you wish, you can then continue with a private coaching session to help you further integrate these principles to your performance or sport.
